The Speech Abraham Lincoln's Friends Urged Him Not to Give

The Controversy Surrounding Lincoln's 'House Divided' Speech

Between June 7th and 15th, 1858, Abraham Lincoln was quietly crafting a speech—but not in a linear fashion. He wrote it in fragments: a sentence here, a thought there. Scattered across scraps of paper, the speech only came together in full as the hour of its delivery approached.

It was intended for the Republican State Convention in Springfield, where—just as Lincoln anticipated—he would be nominated as the party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. His opponent would be Stephen Douglas, the incumbent senator from Illinois.

On June 16th, the convention assembled. About a thousand delegates gathered and passed the following resolution unanimously:

“That Hon. Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States senator to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's term of office.” [1]

The previous evening, Lincoln and his law partner, William Herndon, returned to their law office in downtown Springfield. Lincoln locked the door behind them, tucking the key into his vest. Then, from the folds of his coat, he produced the manuscript he intended to deliver the next evening and began to read—slowly, distinctly—to Herndon.

He began by describing the failure of recent political compromises to quell the slavery debate. The agitation, he argued, had only grown stronger. Then came the words that would define the speech—and shake the room:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,—I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the farther spread of it… or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States—old as well as new, North as well as South.” [2]

Lincoln paused after reading this paragraph, and looked at Herndon. Herndon was stunned. He agreed with the truth of it—but questioned the timing. Lincoln didn’t flinch.

“That makes no difference,” Lincoln said. “I want to use some universally known figure, expressed in simple language … I would rather be defeated with this expression in the speech, and it held up and discussed before the people, than to be victorious without it.” [1]

Herndon wasn’t the only one concerned. The next day, a few hours before his speech, Lincoln gathered a dozen trusted allies in the Library Room of the State House and again read the speech aloud. Every man in the room condemned it. They called it unwise, impolitic, and too far ahead of its time. Herndon, alone among them, stood and urged Lincoln to deliver it anyway:

“If it is in advance of the times, let us—you and I, if no one else—lift the people to the level of this speech now, higher hereafter.” [1]

Lincoln listened to all of the arguments. He paced. And then he spoke:

“Friends, I have thought about this matter a great deal… and am thoroughly convinced the time has come when it should be uttered; and if it must be that I go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to truth—die in the advocacy of what is right and just.” [1]

At 8PM that evening, June 16th, Lincoln delivered the speech to a packed hall in the Illinois State Capitol. It was met with shock, admiration, and controversy. Many Republicans feared it would doom his campaign. Democrats mocked it. Even close friends called it a mistake.

Lincoln and the chamber in which he delivered
his 'House Divided' speech

One visitor, Dr. Long, told Lincoln bluntly:

“That foolish speech of yours will kill you… Don’t you wish it was wiped out of existence?” [1]

Lincoln paused, lifted his spectacles, and replied:

“If I had to draw a pen across, and erase my whole life from existence… I should choose that speech, and leave it to the world unerased.”

The speech produced a profound impression across party lines. Democrats rejoiced in its perceived recklessness. Conservative Republicans received it coldly, fearing it would cost Lincoln the election. But abolitionists heard in it the voice of a fearless leader—one who understood the danger and dared to name it.

Leonard Swett, one of Lincoln’s closest political allies, later reflected:

“The first ten lines of that speech defeated him… Yet he saw that it was an abstract truth, and standing by the speech would ultimately find him in the right place.” [1]

Lincoln lost the Senate race to Douglas. But he gained something greater: a reputation for moral clarity. The speech placed him in the national conversation. It signaled that Lincoln was not just a politician—but a statesman willing to risk defeat for the sake of truth.

📄 Why His Decision to Keep the Lines in His Speech Matters

Lincoln wasn’t merely criticizing a law—he was diagnosing a national crisis. By invoking his adaptation of the biblical phrase “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand”—spoken by Jesus in Mark 3:25, and echoed in Matthew 12:25 and Luke 11:17—Lincoln warned that the Union could not survive in its fractured state. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise through the Kansas-Nebraska Act had shown that political compromise had failed. The issue of slavery would demand a final reckoning.

He chose the 'house divided' metaphor deliberately. As he told Herndon, he wanted “some universally known figure” that would “strike home to the minds of men.”

Christ’s words did exactly that—and they still do, even 167 years later.

This was another topic from the archives of Abraham Lincoln, Storyteller.

Mac

📚 Works Cited

[1] Whitney, Henry Clay (1908) Lincoln the Citizen: Life of Lincoln - Volume I. New York City, NY: The Baker and Taylor Co. 

[2] "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 2 [Sept. 3, 1848-Aug. 21, 1858]." In the digital collection Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/lincoln2. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed October 17, 2025.